A bit of confession, here. I do believe in God, although not in the sense of Him being a cosmic bellhop, who will grant your desires if only you bee-leave, ala the prosperity consciousness grifters. My concept is more like Spinoza, that He reveals Himself in the perfection of nature, rather than bothering with the petty personal details of the life of man.
I also believe in angels, or, let me put it this way, some intermediary kind of evolutionary being between mortal man and absolute perfection, which would be God.
Both my parents were raised Catholic, married in the Catholic church, all that, but then they became “lapsed” Catholics and I didn’t get the training. So I do have some of the Catholic teachings and attitudes, which I got via osmosis, but I never went through any of the rituals, First Communion, any of that. I am, therefore, technically a heathen.
The lapsed Catholic thing, in my family, was very severe. My father was an altar boy and heavily into the church. Then he turned into an atheist. And then he got paranoid and what I grew up hearing was “God is punishing us.” I heard this as a small child and I of course wondered, “What did I do? I’m only four.”
And he was not the only one, by a long shot. I had a roommate in college, same thing. They go from God is running the show to he doesn’t exist. If this was just an intellectual decision, it wouldn’t be so problematic. But it’s a deeply emotional one, and ini my experience I have seen it accompanied by great anguish and considerable anger.
Marge Greene is a lapsed Catholic. She follows a pattern I have seen, of lapsed Catholics, disillusioned Catholics going bonkers — although, Marge is bonkers per se. Her religious issues are just one facet of her maladaptation to life and you’ll see her mental landscape in the Twitter thread below.
What I will say is that there are horrific stories, true ones, about things that have happened in the Catholic church. There are also very fine people that I’ve met who are Catholics. They’re decent, sane, and generous people. The bottom line is this: Every religion, race or ethnicity of people has its good people and its bad. And in an institution as ancient and venerable as the Catholic church, there have been bound to be a few bad eggs.
That said, listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lunacy du jour, if you have the stomach.
“Today, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue accused me of slandering Catholics and Catholicism in an interview I gave to Michael Voris at Church Militant. Nothing could be further from the truth, and he must apologize promptly and publicly for these words. 2/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
With great sorrow, and unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, I stopped attending Catholic Mass when I became a mother, because I realized that I could not trust the Church leadership to protect my children from pedophiles, and that they harbored monsters even in their own ranks. 4/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
Just so we’re clear, bishops, when I said “controlled by Satan,” I wasn’t talking about the Catholic Church. I was talking about you.
The Catholic Church must throw out these monsters instead of lecturing the people its own bishops have driven away. 6/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
Is the same true of the scheming bureaucrats in miters who preach the gospel while turning a blind eye to the abuse of innocents? That’s for God to determine—and punish. 8/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
They have lied, deceived and committed despicable criminal acts for decades, driving millions out of the Church, causing children to kill themselves, emotionally crippling others and sentencing countless victims to lives of deep mental pain. 10/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
Parents have no way to tell the good from the bad under the current leadership: We are left to wonder whether our parish priest is one of the predators too. 12/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
What more can we expect from criminals and abusers living unaccountable lives of luxury funded by the rest of us, draped in fine linens while choirboys are raped. 14/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
He has done nothing in his long career to reform the appalling state of the clergy. 16/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
…Church, and who spend donations on lawsuits to silence their victims.
Forgive me if I decline to take lectures from the man bishops send out to do their dirty work when their delicate feelings are hurt. 18/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
Until the people running the Catholic Church stop abusing children and stop covering up the abuse of children, I will continue to hold them to account. And I’ll keep naming and shaming the craven enablers who write their press releases, too. 20/
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
I know they’ve made you rich, Bill, but before you meet Almighty God, you might want to consider new clients.” 21/21
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
I feel another Screwtape parody coming on. Maybe that’s all I’ll do, is just comment on politics via Screwtape, considering the utterly insane elevation of the temperature in this political climate. We don’t have to worry about going to Hell, Hell is coming to us.
I think MTG could use a meeting with her deity. She won’t believe who it is unless they show up with the horns and hooves and the tail, though.
Preditors in institutions are a problem, and those institutions will need to find ways to address these issues.
However, the Catholic Church is hardly alone here. There have been a number of megachurches, missions, and institutions that have also failed. There are allegations that Liberty University has failed to protect women on its campus, there is Kamp Kanakuk where they hid the deeds of Peter Newman through non-disclosure agreements, there is the cover-up in Ravi Zacharius ministry, the scandal of Bill Hybels at Willow Creek, or corruption such as Mars Hill.
Unfortunately, these problems are all over the place. MTGs blather is not the way to fix these things. Indeed, this carnival barker sort of show is maybe more the problem. Certain people seize the platform of the institution — the church, the university, the legislature — to promote themselves, rather than reflect the values that are built up and are supposed to come from the institution they become this spokesman for.
Serious thought and restructuring are needed to fix this, not MTGs circus.
The problem with American education is, since Reagan gutted the public school system, we have become more or less the ignorance masses. Religion, along with our military, political, & cultural history, is not taught in depth unless you are able to attend a valid university. By that time, you can choose the easy courses & avoid the real risk of having your ideas challenged. Most just use their education as job training. Then the internet came along so people could live in echo chambers & convince themselves they are ‘smart’. I always remind myself of the following question, ” if someone doesn’t know where they are or the estimated scale of the universe, which most religious people believe ‘God’ made, then what makes you any kind of ‘authority’ on God?”
The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. It will go around the earth 7x in one second. At that speed, it still takes light 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. At that speed it would take 26,000 years to reach the center of the milky way, our galaxy. There are an estimated 350 billion galaxies. The Webb telescope will increase that number. So anytime I, as a Religion major at UNC-CH, hear someone proclaim anything with absolute authority about ‘God’, I laugh. There’s ignorance everywhere. There’s ‘faith’ which, if it follows Jesus’ commandments reported in the gospels, states to love God with all your heart, your MIND, & your soul. I don’t find much true faith in the world. I do find tons of people who want certainty in the face of the one fact we all know…we are going to die & no one knows what lies beyond the grave. Having an open mind is faith. Seeking truth is faith. Living with & loving the mystery we all are experiencing is faith. Practicing the golden rule is faith, especially when there are so many assholes in the world. Arrogance & ignorance will be the death knell of the human species if we don’t repent & embrace truth. The gospels, written decades after Jesus was legally murdered as a criminal by the religious leaders & the Roman state, are full of mysteries themselves. Fact. America’s collective shallow understanding of almost everything would crucify Jesus even faster today as the internet would guarantee.
Marjie needs to realize that Donohue goes after ANYONE who dares to attack the Church, regardless of who they are. It does NOT matter the whys and wherefores behind the attack; it does NOT matter who was intended as the target.
Donohue has gone after the very victims of the Church who were sexually abused for daring to speak out about their abuse (his people have largely done a lot of the Church’s dirty work to refute the claims by digging up all sorts of dirt–like the victim turned to prostitution or had been incredibly promiscuous before suddenly remembering the abuse they’d suffered) so, for Marjie to think that her “explanation” is going to make Donohue back off or back down (or, heaven forfend, apologize), she really needs to lay off whatever dope she’s been using.
I don’t trust any organized religion because all I see and hear are their interpretations of the gospel that support their ideology. I have friends who are “spiritual” but not religious, who actually live the values they believe in and don’t go around shoving it down other peoples’ throats or condemning those who have a different set of beliefs.
What angers me most is how the x-tian right and the GOP are now pimping children and claiming that child molesters and groomers everywhere they turn and everyone who doesn’t believe what they do is a pedophile.
MTG has a lot of nerve demanding apologies from those who call her out while she lies, slanders and slurs her “enemies”. Christian in name only.
ex-Catholic. Wicca for 52years despite 17 years of Catholic education. I lived in the Atlanta area in Gwinnett County for 12 years. Every month or so they arrested a pedophile. It was never a priest, but usually a Youth Minister at a right-wing evangelical church, a pastor (Bishop Eddie Long,) or a coach, including one martial are sensei. Dame was true in Pensacola and Jacksonville (,6yeats in N. FL(.
The Catholic social abuse scandal was ghastly and should never have happened. But the same thing was happening at evangelical churches and never became a national story. Why?
Organization and money.
If you sue a Catholic church,you’re suing a diocese and arcdiocese. They have deep pockets so the amount is very large. Sue the First Crazy So Independent We Don’t. Recignize Any Othr Church as Christian Baptist Church of Were Going to Heaven and You’re Not Church,and you sue one church with probably 300 members? Not a lit of money because Southern,,Independent ,Missionary Baptist churches are independent entities. It stays a local story unless it is a mega church with tons of money. Huge settlements are sexy lead stories. Pastor Asks being quietly fired and a settlement below a 100K isn’t.
Back in the 70s there was a rash of paedophilia cases in Protestant cjurches, particularly among the right-wing evangelical churched. Insurance companies tortured if large payouts of hush money, and thretened to yank their coverage unless they did background checks. One of the tv news magazines looked at the SBC website where unemployed ministers posted their resumes. The news reporter interviewed a convicted pedophile minister, who identified three people he recognized as being pedos.
Margie, drar,it isn’t a Catholic Problem. It is a clerical problem. Catholic priests, youth ministers music ministers, Orthodox rabbis,,Muslim clerics. even Buddhist monks have socially abused those they were supposed to serve.